World View & Market Commentary. Forest first; Trees second. Focused on Real & Knowable facts that filter through the "experts" fluff and media hyperbole. Where we've been, what the future may hold and developing a better way forward.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Well, today is the first trading session following Armstrong’s key 4/19 date and the futures are down significantly with the /ES trading at the 850 level:

And surprise! Bank of America triples “profits” to over $4 billion in the first quarter. Come on, Ken, have you no shame? That could easily turn into a PR nightmare, and I sincerely hope it does. You guys know where I think those “profits” came from. Just a continuation of the 3rd world corruption, except these guys would make John Dillinger blush.

Oracle announced they will buy Sun Micro for $7.4 billion, taking the place of IBM as buyer.

April 20 (Bloomberg) -- American International Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and other companies squandered more than $5 billion on executive pay since 2005 and must recoup the payments or face lawsuits, a pension fund said.

The Service Employees International Union’s pension fund said today it sent letters to 29 companies, including AIG and Morgan Stanley, demanding that directors recover “incentivized executive pay” based on derivatives or other investments whose value was later written off. Such letters often are the precursor to investor lawsuits.

The index of leading indicators comes out at 10 Eastern, no other data this morning, bond auction galore, of course.

The futures are now sitting right at the bottom of the rising wedge that defines my potential ending diagonal. A break below 850 is bearish and may indicate that this godforsaken corrupt and deceitful rally is finally going to get some sort of correction. Is this the start of the next big plunge? Possibly, but we’ll let the charts guide us for the technicals, the fundamentals, despite false bank “profits” have not changed, the debt is still there.